Christian Lawyers Aid Nigeria’s Families Targeted For Their Faith
JOS, Nigeria — She had been among a dozen Christians abducted from Nigeria’s Middle Belt. Four months on, Fulani militants killed her, chopped her into pieces and forced a starving 12-year-old Christian captive boy to eat some of her flesh.
Baptist Press learned of the alleged atrocity from a Christian attorney who since 2010 has provided pro bono legal aid to Christian women and children persecuted in Nigeria for their faith.
“Immediately, of course, the boy started vomiting and he has been sick. He was released eventually and Christian groups have come to his aid, and he’s right now being treated in hospitals,” the attorney who uses the pseudonym Jabez Musa told Baptist Press Aug. 10 in an interview arranged by Open Doors U.S. “The mother of this boy has been talking, and she was also kidnapped some time ago with her husband.”
Terrorism that began in northeast Nigeria with the founding of Boko Haram in 2002 spread to the northwest, has become common in the Middle Belt and is now spreading to southern Nigeria, Musa said, leaving safe for daily living only perhaps 20 to 40 percent of Nigeria, the largest nation in Africa and the sixth most populous in the world. Nigeria is the deadliest country for believers globally.
Musa told Baptist Press of several alleged atrocities committed against women, including the case of a woman forced to sever an umbilical cord with her teeth after a fellow captive gave birth, and a faithful Nigerian Youth Corps worker who was beaten and tortured in efforts to get her to renounce her faith after captors burned her Bible.
“Other women who are said to be Muslims were taken away, probably for rape,” Musa said. “And so they started beating her. They tortured her mercilessly. And to warn her, they brought a man who was among the victims and butchered him with a sword and said if she refused, that was an example for her. So I don’t know how the story ended, but I am told that she was eventually released and she did not renounce Christ. She refused to renounce her Christ, but she was released.”
In the other case, a mother’s newborn died within weeks, as did one of her three children abducted alongside her, Musa said.
Killings, abductions, sexual violence, and forced conversions and marriages are at a crisis point in Nigeria, particularly impacting Christians and other religious minorities, experts with the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights warned in June, noting documented cases.
“We are particularly alarmed at the very specific and heightened risks of discrimination, violence and exploitation that Christian women and girls are exposed to,” the experts said in a press release. “The testimonies we have received paint a horrifying picture of fear, trauma, coercion and abandonment. Victims and survivors must not be left without protection, justice, reparations, including rehabilitation and meaningful support.”
Musa is among a network of Christian attorneys supported by Open Doors International, its partners and other Christian groups to provide legal aid to women. He’s fighting atrocities committed both by terrorists who destroy property, murder and kidnap Christians, as well as Islamic religious groups such as the Hisbah, who force pubescent Christian girls into Muslim marriages sanctioned by Sharia but illegal under international law.
“There is a case that we are pursuing here in Jos of a young girl who was abducted in a neighboring state of Bauchi. The parents came to us lawyers,” Musa said. “We traced it. And we sued the Hisbah body, including their attorney general and the Bauchi state government. And so we are in court.”
In most cases under Sharia law, girls are abducted and given a Muslim guardian who forces them to marry Muslim men, brainwashing the girls and making it difficult for them to appreciate being reunited with their Christian families when attorneys secure their release, Musa said.
Hisbah is active in Nigeria’s North, where Sharia law is prevalent in 12 states, joined by terrorists including Boko Haram, ISWAP and others; while Fulani militants, bandits and other militants have become so active in the Middle Belt, it is now characterized as a war zone.
Musa has defended hundreds of victims in courts, as well as survivors in cases of murder, but laments the increasing persecution, particularly as the government fails to combat the violence.
“We are still not tired, but we get disappointed when we see that the government is not doing much. The killings are still taking place,” he said, noting a positive occurrence in April when the government charged several hundred terrorists with crimes, and the more recent conviction of three members of the Ansaru group.
“That is encouraging,” he said, “but that is just a drop in the ocean in view of the mass killings, mass persecution, mass kidnappings, abductions, rapes, and land grabbing that we see.”
While terrorists also target moderate Muslims in some attacks, Musa pointed out that Christians are not committing the murders.
Nearly 3,500 Nigerian Christians – 3,490 – were killed for their faith during the 2026 reporting period spanning October 2024-September 2025, Open Doors U.S. reported in its 2026 World Watch List released in January.
Musa called on the international community to help. Fellow Christian attorneys can lend their expertise in international courts after cases travel through the Nigerian court system, Musa said.
A late 2025 U.S. aerial attack on northwest Nigeria encouraged Christians, many of whom wanted such intervention to continue, Musa said. But the short-term attacks instead worsened conditions.
“They were instead motivated by the strike. And they have been doing more killing en masse, killing (in the marketplace) one person, two persons,” Musa said. “And so we would want to see the international community (shining) their light on Nigeria, making the Nigerian government to sit up (and combat the violence). We believe that if the Nigerian government sits up, Christian will maybe have a respite. Until that happens, Christians are still being persecuted so much. The persecution is spreading.”
This article was originally published by Baptist Press.
Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.